Ukraina valde Ryssland före EU - stora protester som följd, länkar i inlägg2

What do you know about this Ukrainian flag? I can tell you what I know about it. (I am originally from Western Ukraine, both of my parents are from there as well).

Well first of all red and black colours are very symbolic colours for Ukraine and Ukrainian people. A lot of Ukrainian folk songs tell us about those colours. They are also mentioned in works of Ukrainian writers. Usually red means either love or blood and black stands for sadness.

In this red-black flag red means Ukrainian blood, the ones you are ready to spill for Ukraine, and black is Ukrainian soil, our rich ground, the one we are fighting for. This flag is a flag of Ukrainian nationalists. It was adopted in the beginning of XX century by a lot of Ukrainian youth organisation. Later it was official flag of OUN (Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists). Have you ever herd names Petlura? Bandera? Shuhevych? This flag also associated with them.

Protesters said the damage to their elegant capital was justified as the price to pay for the ejection of a leader whose rule they saw had come to epitomise authoritarian kleptocracy. And many were prepared to die in the same cause.

Standing on an armoured personnel carrier parked on Khreshchatyk, wearing a black balaclava, one 18-year-old student was typical.
“We don’t provide our names. We are anonymous,” he said, identifying himself as a member of the militant Right Sector group.
The group’s thousands of warrior activists played a central role in standing up to riot police and the mysterious, black-clad gunmen who fired into the square on Thursday.
“We lost so many of our friends and boys,” he said. “I lost several of my close friends…they were shot down Thursday by the snipers. We must now honour them not only in prayer, but by bringing to justice the criminals from the regime that we have taken down.”

The presence of tens of thousands of citizens on the square, many seen hugging and thanking members of Right Sector and other hard-line groups, was a powerful rejoinder to claims by Mr Yanukovich and Russian officials that the protests were driven by “fascists” and “terrorists”.

Carrying his three-year-old daughter on his shoulders, Oleksandr, a native of Crimea in Ukraine’s south, stood at one of many candlelight vigils in honour of the fallen. With his 13-year-old daughter standing alongside, he told his children: “They are our heroes.”
“We owe them everything, as they sacrificed their lives so that you can have a better future,” he added, with a tear breaking in his eyes.

---Above all, many protesters say, the fight must go on to ensure the dozens of protesters killed in gun battles with police this week did not die in vain.

The day began as usual on the Maidan - the city's main square - with people chopping wood to fuel the fires that have kept the protesters warm through the cold winter's nights, and volunteers handing out free tea and sandwiches.
"Lenin should have been here. It's real communism," said Volodymyr Mahonik, from the western city of Lviv, chuckling at his reference to the Soviet state founder whose statues have been toppled around Ukraine, one after another, to show defiance of former Soviet master Moscow's handling of the crisis.

---But hopes rose as the day wore on and the news came in, ever more extraordinary and, for the protesters, ever more encouraging - Yanukovich's flight from Kiev, the capture of the presidential offices, the police changing sides.
For some it brought an elevation to unexpected duties. Construction worker Nikolai Voloshin grinned broadly as he stood guard outside the high metal gates of the presidential offices, on a hill overlooking Kiev.
Asked who was in charge of security at the monolithic, columned building, he said: "I am. It's my job now."

Asked how long they would stay, Ostap Klyvdyk, a former journalist who described himself as the international secretary of self-defense units set up by the protesters, said self-importantly: "Until the next president comes."

Back on Independence Square, protesters were united by satisfaction over Yanukovich's removal by parliament but far from certain that the three opposition leaders who negotiated with him on Friday were the right men to lead them.
"They betrayed us when they signed the agreement. They serve their own interests, not ours," said Yaroslav Ilkiev, 53, from Lviv. "We wanted only one thing - Yanukovich's departure. This was not part of the agreement."

The dramatic arrival of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the arch enemy of Yanukovich who was freed on Saturday afternoon, failed to restore the protesters' confidence in the opposition leaders.

Yushchenko finally won the presidency in 2005 in a race against the pro-Moscow Yanukovych (after many recounts), and Tymoshenko became prime minister. But she quickly fell out with her erstwhile ally, who dismissed her government after a few months. She came back as prime minister from 2007 to 2010, which was right when the global economic crisis hit Ukraine full force. In the 2010 presidential elections she ran against Yanukovych, she lost.---

Given all the talk that later charges against Tymoshenko were trumped up or falsified in the Ukraine, it’s probably important to know that her ally Lazarenko was prosecuted in the United States, where he was convicted and imprisoned for money laundering and other crimes. Tymoshenko was not charged in that case and she has denied wrongdoing, but she was named explicitly as part of the conspiracy detailed in the indictment.

“Lazarenko received money from companies owned or controlled by Ukrianian [sic] business woman Yulia Tymoshenko … in exchange for which Lazarenko exercised his official authority in favor of Tymoshenko’s companies, and … Lazarenko failed to disclose to the people and government of Ukraine that he was receiving significant amounts of money from these companies.”

Svenska nazister uppmanas att åka till Ukraina för att stödja revolutionen.

Enligt en ny svensk högerextrem sajt med nära kopplingar till nazistiska Svenskarnas parti är syftet att visa att de "står enade med vita, europeiska nationalister i annat än ord".


http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/svenska-nazister-uppmanas-aka-till-ukraina-1/